“And at set plays you look at any of our corners today, you’ll have seen plenty of that going on, plenty.

“And it’s not given, there’s no retake at the corner or a penalty at the corner, and yet in that situation that centre-half knows there’s a little bit of a tussle with the striker, and then he just went to ground and bought the free-kick in my opinion.

“There’s not many referees that would have given that decision today, in the light of the incident, but he did.

“Key decisions, that’s his (Clattenburg’s) job, and he’s a good referee.

“What I did have a problem with was the amount of time added on we had.

“Because anyone who was here second-half, the substitutes alone was four minutes coming off the pitch, let alone everything else.

“And I understand that and I have no problem with teams who are desperate for the points wasting time and slowing the game down, I get it.

“I’ve done it myself, I did it against Chelsea at 2-0 up and Chelsea had something like seven minutes.

“You accept that, you have to accept it as a manager.

“Steve Bruce would have probably accepted seven or eight minutes because that’s what it should have been.

“But it wasn’t, and I’m disappointed in the referee for that, and I don’t care what the scoreline is.

“We were poor today though, we weren’t at it at all, and we’ll address that; in our way.”